Agency Under Constraints: Experiences of Temporary, Internal, Circular, and Return Migrants

Due to the aging populations and declining fertility, advanced economies increasingly fill labor market and skills gaps through managed migration. States have implemented immigration policies or foreign labor policies, yet they impose rigid restrictions, creating a stratified politics of inclusion and exclusion. Current scholarly debates frequently center on these top-down policy frameworks; hence, shifting the analytical lens to the lived experience of worker agency is imperative.

The session aims to reframe the understanding of temporary migration by highlighting how workers’ agency serves as the “invisible work” that makes labor markets function in a rapidly changing global context. The session examines the structural constraints the temporary workers experience and how they navigate, challenge, and negotiate these constraints in their daily lives across diverse contexts of labor mobility and migration. Rather than viewing temporary workers solely as subjects of regulation, the session prioritizes their agency and seeks to uncover the informal strategies and practices that emerge at the margins of developmental migration state regimes.

The session is particularly interested in experiences in East Asia and other regions to facilitate broader comparative discussions on temporary labor migration and migrant agency. We welcome empirical, theoretical, and comparative contributions examining temporary, circular, seasonal, labor, and other forms of managed migration across diverse global contexts. Topics may include structural constraints and vulnerabilities, everyday coping and negotiation, resistance, solidarity, advocacy and collective action, and workers' practices. We also welcome submissions utilizing ethnography, qualitative interviews, and mixed-methods research that privileges the migrant perspective.